1. Field of the Invention
The present invention in general relates to search engines.
2. Related Art
The development of information retrieval systems has predominantly focused on improving the overall quality of the search results presented to the user. The quality of the results has typically been measured in terms of accuracy, recall, or other quantifiable measures of performance. Information retrieval systems, or ‘search engines’ in the context of the Internet and World Wide Web, use different techniques to improve the quality and usefulness of the search results. These techniques may address certain aspects of search engine design such as basic indexing algorithms and document presentation.
An inherent problem in the design of search engines is that the relevance of search results to a particular user depends on factors that are highly dependent on the user's intent in conducting the search, that is, why they are conducting the search, as well as the user's circumstances, the facts pertaining to the user's information need. Thus, given the same query by two different users, a given set of search results can be relevant to one user and irrelevant to another, entirely because of the different intent and information needs.
Most attempts at solving the problem of inferring a user's intent typically depend on relatively weak indicators, such as static user preferences, or predefined methods of query reformulation that may be educated guesses about what the user is interested in based on the query terms. Approaches such as these cannot fully capture user intent because such intent is itself highly variable and dependent on numerous situational facts that cannot be extrapolated from typical query terms.
At times, because of the inability of contemporary search engines to consistently find information that satisfies the user's information need, and not merely the user's query terms, users frequently turn to websites that offer additional analysis or understanding of content available on the Internet. Such sites may include articles labeled as “expert level,” or a particular review as “negative professional review,” or a new product announcement as “new camera”. A user interested in a particular point of view, type of information, or the like then searches within the domain of such a site for articles or links that have certain associated labels or comments. For example, a user could search the aforementioned digital camera site for all camera reviews labeled “camera”. However, while such sites provide extensive useful information that the user can access to address a particular current information need, the problem remains that search results may not be filtered based on content that may offer such specific information.
In order to improve the quality of search results, search results may need to be filtered based on content sought by a user. Furthermore the quality of filtered results may depend on how accurately results returned by a search engine are filtered without rejecting relevant results.
Systems and methods are needed that improve filtering of search results and help users searching for information by providing them with results relevant to their intent in performing the search.